Call of Duty is a known quantity in many ways at this point. The era, specific weapons, and flavor-of-the-year gimmicks might change, but as we round out two decades of annual iterations, it’s not hard to guess what the next one will bring. So it’s no surprise that after playing in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer open beta on PlayStation 5 for a good chunk of the weekend, the feeling I came away with was largely, “oh yeah, this is just more Call of Duty.” That doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun, and I still have a whole lot more left to see in the final version, but so far it feels modern in name alone.
The first thing I noticed when booting up Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer was how washed out everything looked. I thought maybe it was my monitor settings, but the actual game colors are just dull in a way that’s glaring compared to the vibrant styles of so many of its FPS rivals nowadays. Everything seemed to have an extremely soft and grey filter over it, which became a real problem mid-match. I was often unable to spot enemies as well as I normally can since they blend into the environment, at least on the four beta maps (Skidrow, Favela, Estate, and Rust).
Look, I get that these are supposed to be soldiers wearing camo in the middle of a battlefield, but I’m pretty sure my opponents and allies shouldn’t be roughly the same color as the graffitied wall behind them, too. If that contrast between environment and enemy isn’t balanced out, or if players aren’t highlighted or represented through HUD markings in a clearer way, then that’s a problem beyond style alone.
On top of that, with Call of Duty implementing so many different skins now that wildly vary in their colors and designs, Modern Warfare 3 could strangely end up favoring the people in drab, default clothing. Skins weren’t available in the beta, but if someone wants to use their Nicki Minaj skin transferred over from Modern Warfare 2 at launch, it seems like it would be a huge disadvantage since you’d stick out prominently on the maps we’ve seen so far.
The gunplay at least felt good, with an assortment of different guns that were largely fun to use – though the time-to-kill (TTK) felt a bit off and inconsistent between them, going back and forth from being incredibly fast to a few seconds too long. The SMGs in particular seemed very strong in this first beta round, since my assault rifles could take a few bullets longer to down an enemy, making them my go-to right now.
The TTK definitely rewards the person who shoots first overall, which isn’t a shock given Call of Duty’s traditionally fast action, but I’ve run into situations where I would shoot first while using an assault rifle only to be out damaged by an enemy SMG even though I had put three bullets into them before they even started shooting. That inconsistent TTK wasn’t so terrible that it outright ruined any of the matches I played, but it could sometimes be incredibly frustrating. Sniping, on the other hand, felt great on Estate and Skidrow, but all four of this weekend’s maps had such a quick flow to them that I’d often just want an automatic weapon out while running around. Matches seemed to go very fast on the whole, with a classic Call of Duty breakneck pace as you kill, aid the objective, die, respawn, repeat.
It was pretty fun to take on Modern Warfare 3’s objective-based modes with a team, especially when playing Domination on Skidrow or Hardpoint on Favela since those smaller maps would increase the amount of chaos in a given fight. A lot of fights would turn into grenade barrages followed by frantic gunfire around corners, which was really fun to rush into the middle of.
But while I loved the central game modes, the Ground War mode just isn’t doing anything for me so far. Ground War is Call of Duty’s big team mode where two 32-player groups face off against each other on an expansive map. While this mode may be a draw to anyone coming from something like the larger encounters of the Battlefield series, it just felt like too many players on one map for me to enjoy it. And although sniping can be entertaining, it’s often paradoxically hard to find any of those players out in the open because the map is just so big.
Ground War matches can also be particularly frustrating since 32 players are incredibly difficult to try and coordinate, making it extremely hard to focus on one objective over another. The layout of the map operates like Battlefield with different zones to capture and the ability to spawn either on them or fellow teammates. But when you’re on the losing end of a match, you often have no choice but to spawn all the way on your team’s base and run a long distance to any action.
The gunfights you actually have during Ground War feel extremely sparse, too, since a lot of the time you’re trying to run to different points to see if there are even enemies there as you reclaim a zone. Most times you end up running somewhere and getting taken out by enemies simply camping in the zone – then you have to spawn back and do the whole dance again.
While this beta doesn’t give a full picture of what the final game will be like, it has already solidified to me that Modern Warfare 3 is certainly more Call of Duty, with all the good and the bad that entails. I had fun with its multiplayer this weekend, but it seems to lack anything to make this new iteration special or unique. The graphics of the maps and UI seem relatively unchanged from Modern Warfare 2 last year, leaving them fairly unimpressive as a result. And while the gunplay feels as solid as you’d expect from Call of Duty, I’m not finding myself wow-ed by any specific guns or additions this time.
We’ll be back with a full review of Call Duty’s multiplayer closer to launch, but until then I did still enjoy my time with the beta. That said, it also left me curious if there’s anything new hiding in the full version, as well as anxious to see how Modern Warfare 3 feels on PC and if there are any graphical updates there.
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